Poultry Industry

2015-06-12 来源: 51due教员组 类别: Essay范文

Introduction

Poultry is the class of domesticated fowl used for food or for their eggs, such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, or geese. In ancient time, humans hunted animals for eating their meat. The full poultry industry consists of many segments: hatching, brooding, feeding, processing and packaging. With the development of humans’ intelligence and physical skills, they began to master the technics of raising animals. “Improvements in poultry and other livestock species have been pursued through empirical statistical approaches with underlying genetic principles.” (Muir and Aggrey, xiii) Men-raised poultries became nutritious and stable food source which provide a great amount of protein to the growing of people. In modern time, poultry industry has realized automation and intelligence and poultry products have become indispensable parts of people’s everyday meals. The up-to-date poultry industry technology can be summarized into three aspects, short breeding period, long preserved time, and high product quality.

Short breeding period

By looking at the current poultry industry, we can see that the production period is much shorter than before. In the past, the breeding period of scatter-feed poultries cannot be well controlled. People usually provide poultries with waste grain or leftovers from meals and then wait for the natural growth of their animals. However, modern poultry industry captive or even industrial culture means, which can help to increase the growing speed from many ways. For example, the foods provided to the poultries in the modern factory are accurately designed. By scientific experiments and observation, nutritionists developed suitable recipe to the poultries which could balance the nutrition and help growing.

Besides, to reduce the time spent in farm, people have also learned how to control light and temperature in order to change the poultries’ biological clocks. In natural environment, one day is 24 hours with half day and night. In the enclosed farm, people can reduce the poultries’ day into 20 even 18 hours by open and shut down lights at certain time. “The natural molting process takes about four months to complete. However, on factory farms, poultry producers induce starvation to control egg production in laying hens and breeding hens to reduce the molting period to one to two months.” (Facts About the Poultry Industry, Born Free USA)

Long Preservation time

The food can be better preserved, which is due to the fast development of cold-storage technology and developed logistics. It is known that low temperature can help the preservation of fresh food. Before the practical use of refrigerator in large scale, people found no good way to keep food especially in summer. Most fresh food can only be consumed in local market. Since the invention of refrigerator, fresh food can be storage in cold environment for a long time, which means that poultry products can be processed in large amount.

What is more, logistics contributes to poultry industry a lot. It includes supply logistics, production logistics, distribution logistics, etc. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s National Statistics Service reported that 7.07 billion “broiler” chickens, 67 billion “egg” chickens, and 321 million turkeys were killed in 1998 for food.” (Facts About the Poultry Industry, Born Free USA) Thanks to the modern management and the fast transportation, logistics develops very well. Logistics can save much time and achieve high efficiency. It is convenient to transport fresh meat all over the world in time.

Last but not least, high processing speed also reduced the period before poultry products enter the restaurants or homes, which most customers did not see. The reduced processing time allows more preservation time and limits the deteriorate possibility during processing period.

We noticed that there are more and more fast food restaurants opening all around the world. At the same time, it means more and more poultries are needed. Poultry is efficient to produce. The high output and a shorter production period solved this problem.

High product quality

At last, the poultries products are much healthier than before. “The quality of a product is a complex notion, which can be summarized as ‘the whole of properties of a product that give to it the aptitude to satisfy the requirements of the consumer.” (Muir and Aggrey, 53) This is mainly because of the wide use of vaccinations, which prevent poultry disease from spread in a large scale. “Avian infectious diseases are costly for the poultry industry. They increase management costs, lead to production losses and raise humane concerns. Avian infectious diseases are also a concern for humans, since chickens may be carriers for pathogens that affect human health.” (Muir and Aggrey, 283)

“Modern poultry production occurs primarily in enclosed buildings to protect the birds from weather, predators, and the spread of diseases from wild birds. This has allowed farmers to greatly increase production efficiency while significantly reducing the amount of labor required.” (Poultry Production, EPA's Ag Center) Modern medicine has solved more and more difficult diseases happened on human beings. The similar development also saved countless loss to poultry industry. As is said in the last paragraph, Infectious diseases can be disasters to both famers and consumers. On one hand, when diseases spread in the farm, great amount of poultries would die and farmers will suffer from heavy economic loss. On the other hand, if infected poultry products enter the supermarkets or restaurants, people may be also infected by the harmful bacteria. In modern farms, every chicken or duck are injected with vaccines, which prevent the spread of disease.

Conclusion

In the modern time, poultry industry is different from the past. In the past, it only supplied the meat in a small scale and cannot make sure the quality of the poultry meat. However, with the development of science and technology, poultry industry develops very well and become more and more systematic and efficient. Short breeding period can be controlled by the farmers, so the farmers can produce enough poultry meat within short time possible. Long preservation time makes sure that the meat can be bought and found everywhere. It is convenient for people to eat fresh meat from the other places because of cold-shortage technology and the fast transportation. Healthier meat benefit human’s health and the interest of the industry. Vaccinations and modern machines stop infectious diseases, so people will not infect these disease and the farmers can meet the need of the meat market. All of these reasons help poultry industry have an adequate supply to meet the needs of the market and help poultry industry have a sustainable and healthy development.